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The Death and Life of Great American Cities: Difference between revisions
The Death and Life of Great American Cities (view source)
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{{a|book review|}}{{br|The Death and Life of Great American Cities}}<br>{{author|Jane Jacobs}} | {{a|book review|}}{{br|The Death and Life of Great American Cities}}<br>{{author|Jane Jacobs}} | ||
===Systems thinking 1960s style=== | |||
There is so much that is breathtaking about this book. That its author had neither tertiary education nor any experience in urban planning; that is was published in sixty years ago yet seems to depict uncannily the [[high-modernist]] attitudes that {{author|James C. Scott}} skewered forty years later in {{br|Seeing Like A State}}, but which seem to persist today; that its prescription, in is so counterintuitive, visionary, clear and ''brilliant'', and that it is so liberal — ''really'' liberal as opposed to [[libtard]] liberal — pluralistic and imaginative. | |||
It resonates with a series of other great books in adjacent fields over the last sixty years all of whom caution against executive, top-down direction networks of autonomous individuals who are better placed, motivated and incentivised to make executive decisions for themselves. Jacobs was there first, and she if she didn’t articulate [[complexity theory]], [[systems theory]] then she anticipated it with spooky, eerie accuracy. So read ''American Cities'' with {{brSeeing Like a State}}, {{author|Charles Perrow}}’s {{br|Normal Accidents}} and {{author|Donella Meadows}}’ {{br|Thinking in Systems}} and you will have the bones of a grand unifying theory of everything. | |||